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Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Robinson returns as unionist parties square up for Stormont battle

“Well, that escalated quickly”, as people on social media
are wont to say. One moment, the
rhetoric around Stormont’s latest crisis was predictable and tired, the next,
Mike Nesbitt announced his Ulster Unionist party was set to pull out of the
executive. The UUP’s decision put their
Democratic Unionist rivals under pressure to withdraw from government as well
and collapse Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions, nine months before the
next scheduled Assembly election.

Initially, the DUP responded through its North Belfast MP
and deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, who said it would seek to exclude Sinn Féin
from the executive, if the republican party did not “deal with the issue” of
PIRA members murdering Kevin McGuigan.

The DUP, Dodds asserted, was prepared to bring down the
administration at Stormont “very speedily”, if the “issue” was not “dealt with”,
or Sinn Féin’s ministers excluded. The
exact meaning of that bluster, you will have noticed, was not entirely clear,
but the tone of his comments suggested that the Democratic Unionists’ withdrawal
from government was highly possible, if not necessarily inevitable.

Enter stage left Peter Robinson, fresh from his summer holidays. The DUP leader quickly dashed off a platform piece for yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, condemning Ulster Unionists for ‘fleeing the
battlefield’ and implying that his party will confront republicans from the
comfort of its executive seats. The
content had not changed radically from Dodds’ statement, but its tenor had shifted
dramatically.

Mr Robinson expanded on his article this morning, ahead of a
scheduled meeting with the Prime Minister, by calling for a four week
adjournment of the Assembly and an ‘intensive talks process’ to address
Stormont’s problems. He wants the
content to include, not only the murder of Kevin McGuigan and related issues,
but also ongoing disagreements over welfare reform and other matters ‘causing
deadlock’ between parties.

Suddenly, we’re back in drearily familiar territory, looking
at the prospect of another round of crisis talks to overcome problems which, in properly working institutions, would either not arise at all (the fall-out of a paramilitary
murder), or else form the everyday substance of government decision-making
(reforming welfare and agreeing a budget).

It’s a favourite tactic for Mr Robinson and the parties at Stormont; shifting the onus of deciding what happens next unto the Westminster
government, which risks appearing callously cavalier about the ‘peace process’
if it refuses to facilitate more negotiations.
It also raises the highly unlikely possibility of extracting new funds
from the treasury to ‘support’ a new agreement, all in the interests of helping
poor, benighted Northern Ireland stagger past the latest obstacle to reconciliation.

However, in the current circumstances, Mr Robinson’s call
for talks is designed primarily to wrong-foot the UUP.

If the DUP were to negotiate new ways to test political
parties’ links to paramilitaries, it would claim that it had successfully
emasculated republicans and Sinn Féin, while the Ulster Unionists shirked their
responsibilities. And given that Mike Nesbitt’s party has walked away from
government, what is its role in helping the executive surmount its difficulties,
if talks do take place? Mr Nesbitt seems
unsure. Meanwhile, the DUP insists that
it has remained in the executive to fight for unionism and it will be an exceptionally truculent partner for its fellow executive parties, should it not get its way.

Mr Nesbitt sensibly opposed Mr Robinson’s proposal to
adjourn the Assembly. Indeed, the motion
for adjournment has been defeated in the Assembly’s business committee, courtesy of the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Féin. This deprives the DUP of more time to decide
whether it will appoint a minister to replace the UUP’s Danny Kennedy, whose
resignation from the executive precipitated the latest round of political tit
for tat.

The UUP’s decision to leave the executive was an intriguing move, though it also highlights inconsistencies in the party’s thinking. When Mike Nesbitt became leader of the Ulster
Unionists he emphasised his intention to stay in the executive, during the leadership contest. Now his party has framed its choice to
withdraw from power-sharing, not only as a principled stand against IRA
violence, but also as a way of creating a working opposition at Stormont to improve
the way government here functions.

Nesbitt says he doesn’t want the Assembly to collapse and,
certainly, the UUP’s strategy relies on the DUP remaining within the executive. However, the Ulster Unionists clearly intend
to attack Peter Robinson on the basis that he hasn’t had the moral courage to
withdraw his party from government.

Peter Robinson will worry away at any perceived
contradictions in the UUP’s position. His
return from holiday has certainly coincided with a more confident appearance to
his party’s manoeuvres. There are
suggestions that the DUP leader’s powers are diminishing, but he could yet prove to
have enough political cunning left to outwit his unionist opponents again.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The DUP have only one interest that is votes in the next Assembly Election. At the moment my perception from a cross section of Unionist voters and non voters is that DUP support is waning rapidly. The Lucid Talk poll although not an accurate survey should give everyone a steer as to who is winning over the voters minds.

I suspect that the DUP will pay the penalty for promising to deliver and obviously failing on many counts, it appears from history that they can viciously attack other parties but their ability to defend themselves in a tight corner is yet to be proven. The loss of wages, expenses etc. would also erode support for the leadership.

The DUP are now fully dependent on SF to save them, SF dumped the UUP is there any reason to for them support the DUP. The next few weeks will tell us.

I suppose we'll see in time if significant DUP support is switching to the UUP. The Lucid Talk survey might be interesting, but it's easily manipulated and self-selecting, so it will be no more than that.

There's a definite irony in the DUP attempting to restore legislation to prorogue Stormont, given that their St Andrews Agreement took away those powers.